Sunday, August 31, 2008

Ahhh, Labour Day. This is far and away Grammar’s favourite day of the entire year. All summer long, all these random people mill about the streets and shops at any hour of the day. Children play happily outside until all hours of the night. Bah, humbug! Send the big ones back to their offices and the little ones back to their institutions of learning. Let the time of quiet and order and schedules begin again. As the air outside becomes blessedly nippy, Grammar can bundle up and walk the quiet streets, devoid of summertime hedonists running amok. Ahhhhh.

Friday, August 15, 2008

I miss being able to stay up late. It’s been a busy week of work, but so nice to have the Olys to relax with in the evening. I wish I still had my old night-owl abilities and could stay up to watch more of the live coverage but alas, Grammar needs her bed by 11:00 these days.

I miss my youthful multitasking skills. This busy work week has involved a fair amount of co-ordination between a number of transcribers and the office manager. There is a flurry of messaging and emails and phone calls first thing each morning as we sort out the assignment o’ day.

So yesterday I was attempting to start a work download, messaging with two people about how this particular task would be split between us, and phoning the office manager about a download problem I was encountering. In the midst of this, one of my stable of tradeserfs rang the doorbell. SRH was unhelpfully in the shower and although I bellowed, declined to leap out of it and answer the door in a towel. Well, I thought my head was going to explode.

I miss my Laddie. I keep forgetting that he actually doesn’t live with us anymore. We ordered Chinese food for dinner tonight (Olys! Beijing!) and I automatically warned SRH and VCCGirl, as they loaded their plates, to save enough for the Lad. He’d always go to the fridge when he got home late from work, you see. It really jolted me that I didn’t need to save dinner for my boy, tonight or any other night. Funny how it hit me after he’s already been gone over a month. You think you’re ready and more than ready, some days, for them to head out on their own. But it still feels so very strange.

I also miss weather under 25 degrees Celsius -- but I’ll get that back soon! (I can actually tell exactly when the temperature hits 25. That precise point is the end of my comfort zone.) Sorry, sun-worshippers, but I’ve got autumn in my sights, and it’s a-coming!

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Good morning, Blog World. Are we all enjoying the Olympics? I am, for the most part. Can’t abide water polo and fail to understand why every channel would want to show us that rather than, say, equestrian events, which I’ve seen nothing of in (our) daylight hours. Wouldn’t you think more of us would want to see that than water polo? We’ve had a lot of beach volleyball, which I enjoy except for being distracted by my own annoyance at the outfits the women players feel obliged to wear. The men wear board shorts and T-shirts, but the women, oh, they must wear itsy bitsy bikinis. It irks me.

So I don’t really have anything witty or clever to say today but feel like keeping in touch. We’ve been in our new home for a month now and continue to settle in. There are still more unpacked boxes tucked away here and there than there should be, but we’re whittling away at them. We’re as busy with tradespeople here as we were in the last few weeks at our old house. But these improvements we get to stay and enjoy!

We’re focusing on the outside, initially, given the time of year and also given that it’s difficult to do too much inside until we finally finish unpacking! After chopping down the incredible house-eating pine tree, we have had people clean out our gutters, which were of course overflowing with pine detritus. We have had a landscaper draw up plans to rejuvenate and spiff up our garden. While the wild, untended look does provide for a sort of camping in the woods effect, it needs some taming. So he has planned a lovely garden that will require no more than two or three visits from him a year to keep in shape. At this place and time, we’re all about no effort on our part!

Two windows on the east side of our house are being replaced, and after that’s done, a fellow is coming to replace all the cedar siding on that side, which is rotting disproportionately to the rest of the house (which is not at all rotten). We are told this is common on the east side because most weather hereabouts comes from that side. Winds driving rain and all that. I don’t know, but it’s important to SRH that this be done.

So once we have new windows and siding and a lovely new garden this fall, we will turn our attention to the inside -- where I hope there will be no more boxes left to impede our improvement efforts there! Our friend KCL, wearing her decorator hat, has many ideas for us and we are excited about implementing them.

So that’s what’s up Chez Grammar: the buzzing of tradespeople. Oh, Grammar does love having serfs about.

EDIT TO POST: It was pointed out to me by eagle-eyed fan Missy Moo that in the above pic, it appears my new garden is going to spill way out into the street. It won't, of course. Obviously a problem with the software (or user thereof). The perspective is very inaccurate.

About Me

I’m a fiftyish lady with a semi-retired husband, two grown kids, and two bossy cats. I’m a cocooner who enjoys working from my home office, reading and fiendish crossword puzzles, but I also love traveling by cruise ship (which I have done often but not often enough!) My primary activity is searching the world for syntactical simpletons and punctuational nincompoops so that I might smack them upside their heads. If you don’t know the difference between its and it’s, go away now, before I find you.